Monday, March 26, 2012

STEVE!: A fascinating look
at how a working critic manages to have spotless integrity in a world of wine
reviewing corruption. STEVE! wonders why he doesn’t have more fame and
influence arguing that, “while there are, understandably, differences in opinions
about the same wine, only my scores come from a deep, dark, needy place.”

WINE SPECTATOR ONLINE: A
wealth of interesting posts this week. James Laube relates the country’s raging
contraception debate to the cork controversy in a column titled, “Just Pull the
Damned Thing Out.” Matt Kramer explains the difference between white Burgundy
and red Burgundy, and, in so doing, sets a Wine Spectator record for most words
used in stating the obvious, a record previously held by everyone on the
editorial staff. And, finally, Tim Fish discovers the wonders of tasting room
crackers.

SAMANTHA SAMS CLUBAGE:
Samantha’s latest post explores just why French wines are better than any other
goddam wines. It has something to do with the tingling of the little hairs on
her girlie parts. As good an explanation of terroir as I’ve ever read ensues,
with Samantha taking the position that “terroir is like Dave Mathews--hard to explain, but I know it when I taste it.” But she really gets going with her tribute to what Grower
Champagnes do to her “bits.” “I’ve got mousse in my caboose,” she begins, “ and
en tirage in my garage.” Yahoo! I love when she gets down and dirty. This girl
writes like a dream, a wet one.

DINER’S JOURNAL: Eric Asimov,
writing under his pseudonym Eric Asimov, talks about the Natural Wines being
produced in Arbois, which he tasted while on leave for Jura duty. “Natural
wines,” he states in his low-key authoritarian voice, “seem to express more
about the people advocating them than anything else—that they are seriously flawed.”

SERMONTATION: Tom Wark
invented wine blogging, which is why he is particularly reviled. Today’s post
is about the Constitution and Tasting Fees. Tom argues persuasively that our
Forefathers expressly forbade Tasting Room Fees under the Eighth Amendment
which expressly says, “…nor excessive fines imposed…” Oooh, he’s got you there,
tasting room scum! Tom suggests that consumers refuse to pay tasting room fees,
and if they run into problems not to forget their Second Amendment right to
bear arms. Tom’s blog makes one wish there wasn’t a First Amendment.

FOOD AND WINE: More on the
mysteries of pairing wine and food from the magazine that is completely baffled
by it. “Cabernet with Eggs” is a delightful article that argues the perfect
match with what comes out of a chicken’s cloaca is full-bodied Cabernet, and
offers a recipe for Egg Foo Young Red Wine. In the penetrating “Trust Your
Palate,” Wine Editor Ray Isle says that the trick to matching food and wine is
to have faith in your own taste. A convincing argument for canceling your
subscription.

ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON THE
WINE TRAIL IN ITALY:
Alfonso transports us to another time and place with his blog—I think it’s
Hooterville circa 1960. Today’s post,
“Pasta My Prime,” is a gorgeous lamentation about aging and some other stuff I
couldn’t make heads or tails of. The words flow like a busted sewage main, and
leave you thinking, Was that a brilliant post, or an eye chart?

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Jay
McInerney writes for the 1%--that is, the 1% who are happy he replaced John and Dottie. His column this week focuses on his visit to Sting’s winery in Italy, where he practices
Tantric sex with himself. Meanwhile, Lettie Teague has one more retraction to make about
yet another mistake in her column, “I regret that I mistakenly wrote that
‘Romanee-Conti’ referenced a gypsy whore.”

1WINEDOODY: In today’s post,
Doody makes the case for Portuguese white wines. Entitled, “Who You Callin’
Vin, Ho?,” in Doody’s signature Look at Me I’m Hip style, he argues that Vinho
Verde belongs at your table, especially since he had to travel all the way to
f***ing Portugal, on their escudo, to teach you this. It’s quite a convincing
romp, and, best of all, we can look forward to his Tweets about Vinho Verde this
coming weekend! Example: “This 2008 Vinho Verde makes me want to rush to the
airport and have my junk touched! A+”

VORNOGRAPHY: Alder talks
about the rash of counterfeit wines on the auction circuit and offers his
services pro bono heado. “Line up those 50,000 bottles of old wine from that
Rudy Dude’s cellar, give me 36 hours, I'll taste them all and I’ll tell you which ones are fakes.
And, as a bonus, I’ll post some spectacular photos, mostly of kitties.” Hard to
argue with a guy who definitely knows about fake.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

In this edition of the
Basics of Wine Appreciation we’re going to talk about wine and food pairing.
Food and wine go together like death and old people. You can’t talk about one
without talking about the other. But it makes you uncomfortable. You feel
overwhelmed by it, ill-prepared, even scared. But Grandma’s gonna die anyway.
All you can do is try to make sure it isn’t ugly. So it is with food and wine.

How does wine enhance
food, and vice-versa?

Imagine a meal so wonderful it erases the need to get drunk.
Yeah, I know, you can’t. Yet imagine a wine so amazing you don’t feel the need
to eat. Easy, right?! So really what we’re talking about is the meaninglessness
of food without wine. I’d no sooner eat a meal without wine than I’d watch TV
with my pants on. Which can get tricky in airport terminals. (And explains the
public address warning to not handle a stranger’s package.) Wine enhances food
by altering your consciousness. One minute you’re thinking, “This dinner
sucks,” but a glass of wine or two later you’re thinking, “I’d better eat more
or I’ll be shitfaced.” Oh, there may be other reasons wine enhances food, but,
honestly, that’s the only one that matters.

What are the basic
things to remember about matching wine and food?

First of all, you should remember that it’s always important
to have way more wine than food. A good rule of thumb is one bottle of wine for
every three ounces of meat. (If you’re inviting vegetarians over for dinner I’m
not really sure why, but you’ll need a lot more wine just to get through the
damn meal. Hint: Gruner Veltliner is
basically Beano.) Secondly, remember that the price of the wine and the
price of the food should be in inverse proportion. As the price of the wine rises,
the cost of the dinner should get lower. What are you, a sheikh? Would you like
fries with that sheikh? Serving very pricey wine with fancy-schmancy food is a
ticket to culinary disaster, like making reservations at Hooters for Mother’s
Day. Stick to cheap wines with your expensive meals. You don’t need Chateau
d’Yquem with your foie gras! That’s nuts. You can get the same experience
serving it with Barefoot Moscato. Use common sense. And when you want to
feature a very expensive wine you’ve been saving for a special occasion, why
ruin it with an expensive meal? That bottle of Screaming Eagle? Hot dogs and
Tater Tots. Napa Valley’s most expensive and snootiest
cult wine screams for pig intestine and floor sweepings. Which might also
describe their mailing list.

You also want to remember that wine just isn’t meant to go
with food from many foreign cultures. There are people that will tell you that
the perfect wine with Thai food is Gewürztraminer. Have you ever had Gewürztraminer
with Thai food? It’s like trying to put out a house fire with Chanel No. 5.
It’s the same with Indian food. People always ask what wine goes with curry.
Something red? Something white? Something with residual sugar? No. Actually, I
use Indian food as a foil for the corked wines from my cellar. Something about
a touch of TCA that brings out the best in Indian cuisine. (Hint: That same wet dog component is
wonderful with Korean food.) Don’t force stupid wine and food pairings.
Just get over it. There isn’t a perfect wine match for every food, and anyone
that tells you otherwise is an idiot. Or writes for Food and Wine. Same thing.

What’s the best way
to approach pairing wine with food?

It’s always best when planning a dinner party around wine
and food to pretend you’re going to be dining alone. If it were just you eating
that carefully prepared feast, what would you drink? Reflect upon your past
experience eating alone, no doubt quite extensive if you’re always annoying
your friends with food and wine pairings. The answer is, obviously, you’d drink
whatever the fuck you felt like drinking. So treat your guests as you would
treat yourself. Just open some goddam wine and get over it.

Aren’t white wines
better with fish and red wines better with meat?

It’s a little known fact to everyone except experienced wine
people that red wines are better with everything. Everything. I repeat,
everything. White wines aren’t designed to accompany food. They’re all messed
up with acidity, and you serve them really cold. OK, maybe you serve white wine
with really cold food like gazpacho, ice cream and everything served by that
really drunk waitress at IHOP. But otherwise, always think red wine with
dinner. Also, don’t let anyone tell you that Champagne is great with food. Just think
about it. Underripe fruit fermented in a bottle until it bubbles? What are we,
homeless people? No. Champagne,
if it’s any good, ruins the taste of food. It does, however, taste really good
on human flesh.

So why do we spend so
much time and effort on matching food with wine?

There’s a huge Food and Wine Cartel that makes unspeakable
amounts of money intimidating people about what wine they should consume with
their food, that makes them feel they are missing out, that they’re culinary
and social failures. There are whole cable channels devoted to it, countless
magazines, an endless parade of winemaker dinners and wine-pairing menus. Let
the experts tell you what to drink with your gourmet meal! You’re stupid, you’d
probably ruin it with that wine you just like to drink. All you need to do is
subscribe, or tune in, or leave it in our hands, and a world of sensual
pleasure awaits you, a world unobtainable to mere mortals, those without the
secret metrics. What better way to rob folks of the pleasures of both food and
wine? Talk it to death.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Why do babes always seem to need dicks? It’s like they have
a hole, right in the middle of their being, that only a guy like me can fill.
I’ve seen ‘em all. The babe who thinks her looks are going to last forever,
only to look in the mirror one day and see more sag than a Russ Meyer movie.
The babe who bad luck follows around, like the saps who keep betting on Syrah
to be the next big thing, as if a horse that always finishes last is suddenly
going to find a way to get to the finish line first. Good money being thrown
after bad—like buying a second bottle of Prosecco. The babe who thinks she’s
got life figured out, only to end up deader than a Matt Kramer opinion. But I
wasn’t sure what kind of babe Crystal Geyser was, except the kind that men
want. And not just men, M.W.’s too.

“So your friend was murdered. And other friends of yours
have been murdered too. You’ve got more dead friends than Lou Foppiano’s
FaceBook page. Care to tell me how that happened?”

Crystal
just stared out my window onto the Healdsburg
Square, small tears developing in her dead eyes.
Hell, I thought, the Square isn’t that ugly. Unless it’s Barrel Tasting
Weekend. Then it’s filled with the saddest of self-deceiving humans. The ones
who think that if you go to a bar from 11 to 4 you’re a drunk, but if you go
wine tasting you’re a connoisseur. The lifeblood of our little town. The whole
town blows. It blows a .15.

Crystal
slowly sat on my luxuriously appointed office couch. I could hear the bedsprings
creak. I couldn’t help but notice her tight skirt sliding up to her as yet
unapproved appellation—the Petaluma Gap. The nights are cold there, I thought,
but there’s a warm patch if you know where to look. I knew where to look. Just above the dark wind tunnel.

“Look, HoseMaster, I confess, I’ve got a thing for guys who
know a lot about wine. Yeah, they’re the worst lovers, always drunk, and softer
than a five dollar Moscato.” She stared at me, but I knew what she meant. But
it’s nature’s way of making sure M.W.’s don’t reproduce. The male M.W.’s
anyway. The women? Yeah, well. They're for blind tasting.

“But since I was a teenager I’ve fantasized about them,” Crystal continued, her voice rising like the price of 2009
Bordeaux--that is,
fueled by stupidity. “I didn’t know then what I know now. I just lusted for a
man with a silver cup around his neck, like Sammy Davis, Jr, only always white.
When I found out that M.W.’s existed I was smitten. These were the men I wanted,
in the worst way, these Gods among us. Yet I knew that many, many bimbos threw
themselves at these men. Hugh Johnson groupies, Michael Broadbent groupies, Tim
Hanni groupies…OK, not so much Tim Hanni, but you get my drift, don’t you,
HoseMaster?”

“Sure, you got the hots for wine boors. Guys who can explain
terroir with a straight face and a forked tongue. What’s that got to do with
your friends you claim were murdered?”

“Don’t you see, HoseMaster? I couldn’t have any of them, not
a single real M.W., they weren’t interested in women, not unless you owned a Burgundy domaine or dressed like Angelo Gaja, as if they
make women’s clothes that small. So I went after boys sitting for the M.W.
exams, hoping to fall in love with one who ultimately passed, who maybe even
passed because I inspired him.”

“So your friend who just had his throat cut, he was studying
for his M.W.?”

“Yes.” She was whispering now. She had a stunned expression
on her face, the kind of dead stare you see on people listening to Alice Feiring speak. But something didn’t seem right. “He was about to sit for his
exams. Everyone knew he’d most likely pass on the first try. I thought he was
my ticket out of this miserable, lonely life.”

“And, instead, you were his ticket out.” OK, sure, it was a
cheap shot, but I wanted to wipe that dead smile off her face, see if there was
something underneath that cold exterior. Like how you warm up a cold glass of
Vinho Verde with your hands, only you find out what it had going for it was that coldness. So you end up with a glass of warm, fresh from the bladder.

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess I was.”

“Miss Geyser,”
I said, “I don’t believe you for a minute. I don’t know what your game is,
Girly-girl, maybe it’s some weird wine game, Shoots and Lattices, maybe Monopole.
Whatever it is, I don’t want anything to do with it. Now get out of my office.”

Babes. Always trouble. All I could think about was heading
down to the Square, cruise for drunk tourist cooze. I wanted nothing to do with
anything M.W.

But Crystal
had pulled a piece, and it was pointed at my spacious forehead.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

“On Thursday, Mr.
Kurniawan, 35, was arrested on charges — filed in federal court in New York —
of trying to sell fraudulent wines, which, if genuine, would have been worth
$1.3 million, and also of counterfeiting wine.”—Eric Asimov, New York Times, March 13, 2012

So, kid, what are you in for?

Counterfeiting. You?

I bilked thousands of people out of money with a Ponzi
scheme.

Yeah, I know Ponzi. Makes crappy Oregon wine. Though I loved him in “Happy
Days.” I prefer Burgundy.
Ever had 1923 Richebourg? I sold a bunch to some douchebags in LA. It was
actually Lawry’s beef au jus, but those blowhards couldn’t tell. They just
thought it had a dollop of Syrah in it.

I’m not talking about wine, I’m talking about taking
millions of dollars from people who thought I was investing it in the stock
market, then paying them dividends from money I stole from other stupid people
who thought I was investing it. I should have been smart like you and just
printed counterfeit money to pay them with.

No, I didn’t counterfeit money. I counterfeited famous and
rare wines.

No, the actual bottles of wine. I forged bottles of wine to look like famous old wines, then got auction houses to sell them for me.
Man, it’s a rush when your case of 1947 Cheval Blanc goes for $20,000 and it’s
really a case of forged Cheval Blanc bottles filled with ’64 Louis Martini
Cabernet I found at an estate sale. Even if they open the bottle and taste it,
those chumps can’t tell. It’s not the wine they’re drinking anyway, they’re
drinking the prestige, the label, the imagined history, their own hubris.
Hubris tastes really yummy with foie gras.

Didn’t the auction houses suspect something was weird when a
kid like you showed up with hundreds of bottles of rare wine?

Yeah, sure. And FaceBook cares about your privacy. It’s just
a show, man. It’s entertainment. Like if you go on a game show and tell them
you’re an elephant trainer when you’re really just a waiter—they don’t care if
it’s the truth, just as long as your story is good enough to fool them. If it
fools them, it will fool their audience. That’s the basic litmus test.

But why would they trust you? You certainly don’t look like
any kind of wealthy wine collector or expert.

What? No. I had cases and cases of old Romanee-Conti, 90% of
it fake, but still. And I’d always go to the best restaurants in New York and L.A.
and if they had old DRC, I’d buy every damn bottle and drink it with these
dupes, then pay for dinner. I’m guessing half the old and rare bottles of wine
in those restaurants are fakes. I know most of the guys ordering them are. I
spent so much money on Domaine de la Romanee-Conti wines, they started calling
me Dr. Conti. It’s like I was a Chinese Dr. J.! Fooling those clowns was a slam
dunk, that’s for sure.

But why are those old wines worth so much money? They’re
just wine.

Amazing, right?! Wine collectors are nuts. They think that
drinking these old wines gives them some sort of power, like Popeye downing a
can of spinach. They try to one up each other. It’s a guy thing. My dick is
bigger than your dick. Ever had 1870 Latour, they shout? Ever put ’59 Margaux
in your mouth? Ever used ’45 Mouton as an enema? These are some seriously
delusional guys. Wine defines them, gives them status, creates an imaginary
aura of class about them, something they sorely lack. Watching them bid on my counterfeit
wines was hilarious. They’d compete against each other for those fake wines
like two guys wrestling naked in a D.H. Lawrence novel. Very homoerotic.

Hmm, that’s interesting. So I took the rich folks’ money by
convincing them I’d make them even richer; you took their money by convincing
them you’d make them more important and enviable.

Yup, you gotta either out-greedy the greedy, or out-vain the
vain.

Dr. Conti—Vascular Surgeon!

Vains my specialty!

But how did you get caught? Me, I just gave in under the
pressure and confessed. I should have just cashed out and gone into hiding. I should have moved in with Bin Laden. Or Martha
Stewart. If there's a difference.

I made some stupid mistakes.

Got drunk and confided in someone?

No. I mean, I guess, in hindsight, I did a lot of stupid
things that could have given me away. Like I would always take home the empty
bottles of those rare wines I ordered in restaurants, so I could use them for
fakes, or copy the labels.

That does seem odd. No one thought that was weird?

You’d think so. But, hell, I’d just bought these bottom
feeders a $25,000 dinner. I could have taken home their empty marriages if I’d
wanted. These were rich guys, stock traders and dot.com types, or they were
“wine experts.” So also professional con artists. Nothing easier than conning a
con—they’re the ones who are sure they can’t be fooled. I told them I was
having a room built for these empty bottles of famous wines. Yeah, like
collectors show off empty bottles. Losers display empty bottles of the ten
great wines they’ve consumed, not guys with supposedly endless cellars.

So what brought down your scam?

Oh, I made up some bottles of wine that actually never
existed, vintages of famous wines that pre-dated the actual winery, stuff that
was clearly fake. It was stupid. I guess maybe deep down I wanted to get
caught. My whole life was a fraud. I just wanted to be loved and admired.

Yeah, I was exactly the same way. And now I’m here in
prison. Oh well, I think you’ll like it here, Dr. Conti.

I’m sure I will. Do they have any art classes?

Yes, they do. For rehab. Why?

I’m going to start working on labels for 2009 Bordeaux. By the time I
get out, they’ll be worth a fortune!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Before wine blogs
existed, those glorious days of yore, I kept copious journals of my wine
experiences. From the very beginning of adulthood I knew that wine would be my
chosen career, and that one day I would be called upon to heap scorn and
ridicule upon it, as one lovingly does for ones children. (My mother once told
me I would have been her favorite child except it cost her a lot to have my
tail docked.) Recently, I was reviewing my journals of the past 35 years and
found some interesting, even prescient, passages. I thought you might be
interested…

I LOVE WINE! June 26, 1975

I’m beginning this journal to write about my love of wine. I
hope you will join me on this great adventure. I almost don’t know where to
start! I went to Trader Joe’s today and bought six(!) bottles of California wine. Spent
all my tip money, not really wise for a struggling paperboy. They’re all made
from different grapes. There’s a Chardonnay, a Pinot Chardonnay, a Merlot (the
“t” is hard, like Grandma’s morning drink), a White Zinfandel, a Sauvignon
Blanc and a Fume Blanc. I think the only difference between Sauvignon Blanc and
Fume Blanc is that the latter is sold to stupid people. Sort of like French
Fries and pommes frites. I wonder how much more money you could get for Mr.
Pommes Head.

I want to explore the world of wine. There is so much I
don’t know! Like why do they waste so many corks—they don’t just grow on trees!
And what do they add to the grape juice to make it smell like peaches and pears
and Dad’s old collection of Gent magazines in the garage? Also, I want to taste
all the greatest wines in the world! Chateau Mateus and the great German wines
of Heitz. Though I admit, I am a bit nervous about tasting those German wines.
I’ve developed a fear of Heitz. ACKrophobia.

But I know that wine will be a passion of mine for as long
as I live, like Atari and Pet Rocks and Onanism, which also are some of the
cornerstones of civilization, and equally addictive. Come along with me as I
try my hand at all of them.

WHITE WINES October
13, 1979

White wines are stupid. It’s why the French call them
“blanc,” as in “blanc stare,” which is what I get when I announce I want to be
a sommelier. I’m even taking sneering lessons. I want to be the greatest
sommelier that ever lived! (Editor’s
note: Mission
accomplished! Voted Greatest Sommelier Ever at the 2003 National
Condescend-Off. I left Andrea Immer in the dust!) Everyone knows white
wines are garbage, yet wineries continue to crank them out. Why would anyone
drink white wine when there is red wine? Oh, because it goes with fish? Who the
hell eats fish? Catholics on Fridays? Who else? Other trained seals?

I’ve heard wine “experts” say that German wines are some of
the greatest wines on the planet. Yeah, and one day a black guy will be
President. (Editor’s note: A black guy is
President.) German wines are made from Riesling! Ever had a Riesling? No, I
didn’t think so. Let me tell you, Rieslings all taste exactly the same. And
they brag that the best ones smell like petroleum! Which they do. It’s like
drinking a glass of Jerry Lewis’ hair. That’s Riesling. Yeah, great wine.

You won’t catch me spending much time with white wines.
White wines are for people that don’t really like wine, just like white people
are for people who don’t really like people. I love wine. Red wine is the only
wine worth drinking. (Editor’s note: Red
wine is the only wine worth
drinking—I read it on Suckling’s blog so it must be half true.)

FIRST VISIT TO NAPA VALLEY June 5, 1980

I found out that Napa
Valley is wine’s Mecca. Once a day wine writers bow down in its
direction and pray that they’ll get samples of the best wines from there. (Editor’s note: This still goes on today,
and there is now even a charity for pathetic aspiring wine writers—the Mecca Wish Foundation.) They believe that,
if they’re faithful, when they die they’ll be greeted in the after-life by a
thousand 100 Point virgins. I’ll settle for two 50 Point nymphos.

I just returned from my very first visit to the beautiful Napa Valley.
It was amazing. I learned so much from going to tasting rooms and talking to
the wine experts that work in them. Did you know that the vine rows are spaced
really wide to allow head room for the winemaker? And that those big propeller things
in the vineyards are used to blow the birds away? (Editor’s note: Actually, they’re for destemming the grapes right as
they’re picked!) Yes, it’s true. I was told those interesting facts by the
very same people who were pouring me tastes of wine, so you know they’re true.
Everything you hear in a tasting room is true—something to remember when
traveling to wine country.

My first appointment was at Sterling Vineyards up near
Calistoga. Wow, what a place! The winery architecture is Moorish (Editor’s note: Oops. It’s actually Boorish.)
The Moors are well-known for their love
of sky rides. I love the Moors, Othello and Mary Tyler. I rode the sky ride up
to the Sterling tasting room, taking in the
breathtaking view of their service road. In the tasting room, my lovely host
explained to me that Sterling
is owned by Coca-Cola. This explained why the wines all tasted the same. (Editor’s note: Coca-Cola sold Sterling Vineyards soon after that when they discovered
wine couldn’t be made according to formula—sorry, Coke, it is now!) I
tasted all the wines but my favorite was the 1977 Sterling Reserve Cabernet,
which I thought was far better than the 1977 Diet Sterling Reserve Cabernet. I
threw up in the sky ride on the way down.

From Sterling Vineyards I drove north to the famous Chateau
Montelena winery. Chateau Montelena is very famous for their Chardonnay being
chosen as the best Chardonnay over many famous French white Burgundies at the
Paris Tasting of 1976. All of the judges for the competition were French, so it’s
not surprising they picked a California
wine. If they’d all been American, they’d have picked a French wine. French and
American people both like to pretend to be open-minded. But a big deal has been
made about the results. I think the results are unfortunate. All that will
happen is Napa Valley will get a swelled head, prices
for land will go up, and rich people will replace actual farmers. (Editor’s note: Told ya so.) Oh, what do
I know? (Editor’s note: You’re a genius,
my friend, simple as that.)

.

More excerpts from my
youthful journals in future posts. I’ve left out the torrid sex scenes. Onan
would be proud.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

If you look back at the April
2007 issue, you’ll read that I predicted 2009 as the greatest Bordeaux vintage ever.
That prediction has come to fruition. In my 35 years of reviewing Bordeaux, I have only
declared 15 Greatest Vintages Ever. (I define “Ever” as Eternity, since I’ve
been dead now for four years and intend to declare hundreds more Greatest
Vintages Ever.) Ten of those vintages have proven unequivocally to be the
Greatest Vintages Ever. The other five proved to be the Greatest Subscription
Boosters Ever, and must, therefore, be considered extremely important.
Personally, I think 2009 is the most important Bordeaux vintage of my career, primarily because
it means no one is talking about that unethical fat jackass I fired a few
months ago any more.

WHAT MAKES IT A GREAT
VINTAGE?

The great oenologist of the Bordeaux Institute, Denis de
Menis, lists five conditions that need to exist in order to have a great
vintage. 2005, the Greatest Vintage Ever, only managed to achieve four of the conditions.
2000, the Greatest Vintage Ever, only managed three, but it was the Greatest
Vintage Ever so it doesn’t matter. According to Denis de Menis, the five
factors necessary to a great vintage are, (1) an early flowering which, in
France, usually leads to a youthful deflowering and makes those old boys happy;
(2) a healthy set, preferably perky nipples pointed at the North Star, and
unrelated to the set that unethical fat jackass I fired has; (3) early veraison, which gets better reception
than AT&T; (4) the grapes have to ripen fully which simply means that they
have to ripen fully, what’s so hard about that, dimbulbs?; and, most
importantly, (5) I say it’s the Greatest Vintage Ever. Only if (5) is true is
it a truly great vintage.

HISTORIC PRICES
DECIDED BY MY SCORES

Yes, the prices for the 2009’s, at the top level, will be in
the $1000 to $2000 per bottle range. You’ll never get to taste these wines, so
don’t bother to criticize how many of them I scored 100 points. You can pretend
you’ve tasted them, like most of my buttboys in my chat room, but everyone
knows you haven’t. For one thing, you’re not Chinese, and they’re the people
buying these overblown caricatures of wine. For another, who would sell you
these wines? You don’t have the clout. Just get over it.

The good news is that at every level, even the cru bourgeois
of the Medoc, the 2009’s represent great wines
that are great values. Don’t focus on the best wines, the 30-50 Classified
Growths and the cult wines of Pomerol and St. Emilion, you can’t afford them
unless you sell your daughter into the Thai sex trade (more on that in my next
“Hedonist’s Gazette”). Instead, check out my glowing reviews for even the
bottom tier of crappy ass Bordeaux
(as I affectionately call it when I’m wandering through BevMo in my bath robe
and laughing my ass off at Wilfred Wong’s ratings). These wines represent
sensational bargains and will certainly drink well for many years, or at least until I rate 2010 as the
Greatest Vintage Ever, at which point they’ll begin to taste like your biggest
regret.

INFLATED EGO, OR
INFLATED WINE SCORES?

I’m certain that there will be a tendency after reading
through my report to believe that either I’ve changed the way I score wines or
that I’ve succumbed to score inflation. This is certainly not the case. I score
wines exactly as I have always scored wines—whimsically, and without any
reproducible method. I find that this is the most accurate way to be largely
inaccurate. It is my method to first declare a vintage the Greatest Vintage
Ever, then I assign large numbers, rather creatively and unpredictably I like
to think, to many of the wines, thus confirming it as the Greatest Vintage
Ever. I do the same for “Wineries to Watch.” I declare them a Winery to Watch
and a few months later I assign them, rather whimsically I think, high scores.
Voila! I told you they were Wineries to Watch! My system remains the same.

Have I fallen victim to inflationary scores? Hardly. I only
awarded 19 perfect 100 point wines in THE GREATEST VINTAGE EVER! This is
remarkable restraint on my part. But,
want to hear something funny? Imagine the poor bastards I gave a score of 99+
to, I think there are about 15 of them. They’re going nuts now trying to figure
out why they didn’t get 100 points. Pretty fuckin’ funny, don’t you think?
What’s the difference between 99+ and 100? I can tell you in one word. Penmanship. But now all these crazy
French Chateau owners will go nuts because 100 point wines are worth a LOT more
money than 99+ wines. And a 94? In The Greatest Vintage Ever? Crap, that’s damn
near worthless. So let’s stop this stupid talk of score inflation. You heard
me. Just shut up, or I’ll sick my buttboys on you.

I invented perfect wines when I invented my 100 point scale.
Until I came along, there were no perfect wines. I know perfect wines, and I’m
telling you there are 19 perfect wines from the 2009 vintage. How do I define a
perfect wine? I’ve always said that greatness is defined in wine by (1) the
wine’s ability to stimulate the palate and the intellect in the 90 seconds I
devote to deciding it’s perfect; (2) the difficulty normal people will have in
obtaining it; (3) the ability to improve with age, especially financially; (4)
me. The 2009’s indisputably meet these guidelines.

Much has changed since I first began reviewing wines professionally
some 35 years ago. And by “professionally,” I mean I paid to have my notes
published myself. I didn’t know crap about wine. Yet despite decades of being
the King of Wine, admired and feared by everyone in the wine business; despite
countless honors bestowed upon me by the French government, including a
Lifetime Pass to Paris Disneyland and the much-coveted French Liver Society’s
“Lesion of Honor;” and despite 35 years of tasting 150 wines a day, my palate
and methods remain unchanged. Why would they change?

But wine, and especially the 2009's from Bordeaux, which I’m willing to stake my reputation on, is more
perfecter than ever.

Monday, March 5, 2012

I spend a lot of time
communing with the dead—and I don’t mean wine tasting in the Finger
Lakes. Some of my best friends are dead. Lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of time talking wine with Andy Rooney, joined by his other dead
friends, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Charlie Rose. Rooney, at least, has
the courtesy to admit he’s deceased. Andy has interesting opinions about wine
and the wine business, and he asked me to share a few more with HoseMaster of Wine
readers. Remember, the opinions expressed are those of a dead guy. They
certainly smell like it.

ON THE THREE-TIER
SYSTEM

I hear a lot of people grousing about the three-tier system,
mostly malcontents who don’t have a piece of that lucrative pie. I wish they’d
just shut up. It’s the three-tier system that makes this country great. I mean
aside from baseball, and those really tiny vibrators that attach to your finger.
I love those things. I found one in Leslie Stahl’s dressing room one time.
They’re great for stirring your martini and trimming your nose hair. I don’t
know why God gave us hair in our nose, do you? Maybe because toenails wouldn’t
fit there. I’d hate to think about a nostricure, wouldn’t you? I think the
polish would give me a headache.

Our great country runs on the three branches of
government--the judicial, the executive, and the whores. Those are three tiers.
And think about wine itself. It relies on grapes, winemakers, and marketing. “Marketing”
is just a marketing word for lying. I like to call lying lying. Marketing is
when you push a cart around in a store. So even wine has three tiers.
Everything runs better with three tiers. Think about insurance. It’s a three
tier system, and everyone loves it. You pay a premium, the doctor sees you, and
the insurance company pays the doctor most of the bill. I don’t hear anyone
complaining about insurance. Except the people that don’t have it. It’s the
same with wine. It’s the little wineries, the ones who think they’re better
than the big wineries, that complain about the three-tier system because they
don’t have it and they think the fact that it exists gets in their way somehow.
I think they should stop trying to end the three-tier system, and, more
importantly, stop whining about it.

I hope we never lose the three-tier system. If we do, the
terrorists will have won.

ON CORKAGE FEES

I went to my favorite restaurant here in Hell the other
night, it’s a really cozy little joint that serves only Prosecco and Gold Medal
Reds from the California State Fair competition. It is Hell, after all. I don’t
understand why people like Prosecco. It smells like the bathwater at the
“Biggest Losers.” I brought my own bottle of wine to the restaurant. When the
bill came there was a charge for Corkage. It was $35. Corkage is a funny word,
don’t you think? If you brought your own eating utensils would they charge a
Forkage fee? Or if you brought Harvey Steiman to dinner would they charge you a
Dorkage AND a Porkage fee? OK, Harvey’s not here in Hell yet, but he will be. It’s
no coincidence he’s blind to the smell of sulfur.

$35 is a lot of money, but I understand why restaurants have
to charge Corkage fees. You don’t go to JiffyLube with four quarts of Pennzoil
and ask them how much it costs if you bring your own lubricant. They need to
make money. The best restaurants employ sommeliers, and they don’t work for
free. You know who the sommelier is, don’t you? The sommelier is the person
whose job it is to sell wine to people he’s never heard of, from wineries
they’ve never heard of, at unheard of prices. Sommeliers are like pitchmen for
infomercials. Fast-talkers selling drunks stuff they don’t really need. You
also don’t take your own rubber gloves to your proctologist. I tried that once.
He left them where he put them.

Next time you go to dinner, don’t complain about corkage
fees. Just be grateful the sommelier isn’t trying to sell you Ginzu knives.

ON TASTING ROOMS

I don’t understand why wineries
call the place where they serve wines to the public “tasting rooms.” No one
there is tasting. They’re drinking. When you taste something you only put a
little tiny bit in your mouth in case it doesn’t taste good, like when you
taste some exotic food you’re not too sure about, something made from a
tarantula or served at Olive Garden. Olives don’t grow in gardens, by the way,
they grow in orchards. You’d think they'd know that.

My uncle went to his local bar three
times a week from 11 AM until 5 PM. He was a drunk. If he’d gone wine tasting,
he’d have been a connoisseur.

Why don’t they just call them
what they are? Bars. The Bar at Robert Mondavi Winery. I think that has a nice
ring to it. It’s not wine tasting, it’s bar hopping. They even have a “tasting
room” at Castello di Amorosa in Napa
Valley. A guy in Napa Valley
built a gigantic Italian castle and makes wine there. At least he’s more honest
about his tasting room. He calls it the Torture Chamber.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

It always starts with a babe. Hell, it usually ends with
one, too. But isn’t that life in a nutshell? We squirt out of a babe the day
we’re born, and one drives us into our grave. The circle of life I think they
call it. They being morons.

The wine business is my specialty. I’m famous. I’m the
biggest dick in the wine business. I go by HoseMaster. That’s not the name on
my birth certificate. That’s Squirt. Not really, but it seems like a joke.
There’s a lot more death in the wine business than you’d think. Most of it goes
unreported. A cellar worker dies cleaning a stainless steel tank. A wine critic
is murdered for a lousy review. A woman dies of cirrhosis, sometimes of the
liver, sometimes from sleeping with Australian winemakers. It happens all the
time. You just don’t hear about it. But I do.

I’ll never forget the gloomy day she first walked into my
Healdsburg office. It was one of those dark winter days when vineyard managers
pray for rain and depressed winery owners think about tossing lit winery cats
at the propane tank and waiting for the insurance money. I’d just finished doing
Avril Cadavril on the slab at the local morgue so I was tired. Avril, our local
coroner, and I had been having a torrid affair. When we had sex at her office I
always felt like there were several pairs of eyes on me—because there were. She was a sloppy
coroner. But she was a perfect lover for me. She knew how to handle dead
things. I was asleep at my desk reading wine blogs. They give a lot of insight
into disturbed minds. And vacant ones. I was awakened from my snooze by a
gentle tap at the door. I composed myself, quickly putting a bottle of Silver
Oak on my desk to appear sophisticated and overpriced, and asked my visitor in.

When she walked into my office you could have used her
buttocks to destem Cabernet. She had perfect legs, two of them, and where they
met seemed like the perfect place to plant Pinot Noir. I know I badly wanted to
check the soil. My eyes ran up and down her body like Kobe Bryant on a basketball
court—only, unlike Kobe,
I knew I’d try to make a pass. The skirt she was wearing was tight enough I
could see her Geneva Double Curtain, and her blouse could barely contain her.
If most women sport barriques, this woman was packing foudres. I finally remembered
to look at her face.

“Hello,” I quipped, “what can I do for you?”

“Are you the HoseMaster?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“My name is Crystal.
Crystal Geyser.” I liked the sound of that. She’d Peaked my interest.

“And why are you looking for me?”

Crystal
seemed nervous. Her beautiful brown eyes, the color of old Madeira,
were darting from the door to the window. I told her to put them back in her
head. There was a slight sheen to her forehead, more charlie than martin, and
she seemed out of breath. At least her chest was heaving, and after my session
with Avril I was close to heaving myself. I wish Avril didn’t insist we make
love in the morgue. It was the only way she could climax, surrounded by a bunch
of stiffs. Yeah, stiff, I remember that. Crystal
was bringing my meat thief back to life.

“A friend of mine was murdered,” she blurted out, “and the
cops won’t believe me when I tell them he was murdered. They say it was an
accident, but, really, how do you accidentally cut your own throat with a Riedel
Pelaverga Piccolo glass? It’s not like they break easily. I know he was
murdered. I know it!”

“Not any more. I just told you. Someone broke it and slashed
my friend’s throat.”

“And you want me to find out who.”

Crystal
just stared at me with those gorgeous brown eyes. I tried to guess her age, but
she wouldn’t let me look at her rim. She had begun to compose herself and for
the first time since she’d walked into my office, that day I’ll always regret,
always remember, never tell the whole truth about, like judging at a wine
competition, she smiled. I felt unnerved. Crystal
was a woman who had always had her way with men. Had her way and then discarded
them, like Wine Advocate employees. Something was starting to smell funny, and
it wasn’t the formaldehyde on my stripper pole.

“I think if you find out who murdered my friend, HoseMaster,
you’re going to learn a lot about your precious wine business.” She continued
to smile that smile. That smile still haunts my dreams, like a Cheshire cat
that wants me dead. “He wasn’t the first of my friends to be murdered, just the
one who meant the most to me. It seems a lot of my friends end up dead.”

“Just friends, or lovers?”

“Is there a difference?” she said in a flat tone. “Is there
a difference between organic and biodynamic? Is there a difference between
unfined and unfiltered? Is there a difference between Jordan Cabernet and that
Silver Oak on your desk? Sure. But the difference is about lies. Like the wine
business, like M.W. exams, like all of it, this whole crummy life.”

She had a point. And that dead smile. And like the augur on
a corkscrew for dimwits, I was headed down the RabbitTM hole.

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About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.

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